On September 27, the government in Azerbaijan introduced a series of restrictions on Internet access as a result of military operations in Nagorno Karabakh. Users in Azerbaijan were left with limited Internet access while access to a number of social media platforms, as well as communication apps, were restricted.
Azerbaijan Internet Watch, and OONI collected data based on OONI measurements from Azerbaijan. Below is the report looking at data between September 2020 to November 2020.
According to collected OONI data, Azerbaijan experienced the blocking of independent media websites as well as signs of potential circumvention tool site blocking. However, further OONI Prote testing is required to confirm these censorship events. Azerbaijan Internet Watch continues to monitor the situation.
Starting on September 27, a number of social media services indicated signs of blocking in Azerbaijan. Among these were:
Whatsapp: between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020 , all OONI Probe WhatsApp tests showed signs of WhatsApp blocking. This is illustrated through OONI Probe WhatsApp measurements collected from multiple local networks in Azerbaijan. Previously according to the same measurements, no such instances were documented. The measurements indicated that attempted connections to WhatsApp’s registration service and web interface (web.whatsapp.com) failed. In some cases HTTP request to web.whatsapp.com succeeded while HTTPS request failed as illustrated below.
This could be an indication of SNI based filtering of WhatsApp. We also observe that the tls_handshakes field presented failures, further suggesting that access to WhatsApp was blocked in Azerbaijan by means of SNI based filtering.
This pattern was seen across multiple ISPs in Azerbaijan between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020.
Telegram: Similarly to the testing of WhatsApp, OONI measurements presented signs of Telegram blocking in Azerbaijan between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020. But unlike WhatsApp, a few Telegram tests during this period were successful. This is illustrated through OONI Probe Telegram measurements collected from multiple local networks in Azerbaijan between 1st September 2020 to 27th November 2020. The following table illustrates OONI measurements collected from the testing of Telegram and WhatsApp on 5 different networks in Azerbaijan between September 2020 to November 2020.
We not only observed similarities between the date range of potential blocking (of WhatsApp and Telegram), but we also saw potentially similar censorship techniques, as the HTTP requests to Telegram Web (web.telegram.org) timed out as well. Similarly to WhatsApp, we observed a timeout in the TLS handshake, suggesting TLS level interference of Telegram as well. As a result, it is possible that internet users in Azerbaijan couldn’t use the Telegram and WhatsApp mobile apps (on the tested networks) during this time period (between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020), even though connections to the tested app endpoints succeeded.
Social media sites: apart from WhatsApp and Telegram, several social media websites presented signs of blocking as well, starting from early October 2020. These include:
It is however, important to note these sites’ limited testing coverage limits Azerbaijan Internet Watch and OONI’s confidence with respect to their blocking, and they have not been tested more recently especially after the conflict ended.
AIW and OONI continue monitoring the situation with blocking.